


Magic Pill

by admiralty



Category: The X-Files
Genre: ...and all that jazz, Canon Compliant, F/M, Infertility, Miracle babies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-04
Updated: 2020-02-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:21:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22563925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/admiralty/pseuds/admiralty
Summary: It wasn’t that she didn’t want another child. She did, desperately. But she wanted mostly to just forget.
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 20
Kudos: 132





	Magic Pill

**Author's Note:**

> Slight trigger warning: infertility/feelings surrounding it.
> 
> Thanks to @slippinmickeys and @monikafilefan for your infinite wisdom.

1.

_Maybe there’s hope._

She knew the thought was ridiculous, irresponsible, even. They were being pursued by unrelenting forces and the world was coming to an end. They’d had their chance at having a family, and it seemed they’d been dealt a bad hand, as usual. But the hope remained.

 _It happened before. It could happen again,_ she told herself.

Months on the run and she hadn’t really had access to birth control. She could have gotten it, probably, if she really wanted to. But every time they made love she would look into his eyes as she felt his warmth spill inside her, his perfectly good sperm on a pointless journey, and although her rational mind told her _never again_ there was a part of her, perhaps the very part Mulder himself had helped cultivate, that thought _maybe. Maybe this time._

Every twenty sixth of the month would come and go, and as she watched the verifiable evidence fan out into the bowl, pink watery tendrils of truth against white porcelain, she still hoped. 

Even with a medical degree under her belt she could never be entirely certain of what exactly had been done to her during her abduction. She knew what Mulder had told her, what a couple of doctors had told her. The stories of the MUFON women. She was infertile, but the evidence indicated otherwise. 

Fairly regular periods and one (1) miracle baby indicated otherwise. 

_His_ name rarely came up. Why would it? She certainly never mentioned him and Mulder seemed to be respecting her unspoken desire to never talk about him again. 

By the time she wanted to talk about it, he’d stopped asking.

  
  
  


2.

After they’d settled into their new home, she’d given up on the notion entirely. She made an appointment with a brand new OB/GYN and rather than explaining her entire history, delivering the news she was infertile to yet another party, she accepted the birth control prescription that was offered to her without hesitation.

When she got home she didn’t tell Mulder. What was the point? They both knew the truth. They’d had one conversation about it back around when they first began sleeping together and, ironically, she’d probably already been pregnant at the time. 

She cursed her carelessness while on the run, but also her foolishness for allowing herself to hope.

She looked down at the tiny packet in her hand; rows of little pills that all meant _no, no, no._

She was so tired of the _no_ , but what she hated even more now was the hope.

She swallowed the pill.

  
  
  


3.

Three years into her new life with Mulder and she was really beginning to get used to just the two of them, alone. It was almost perfect; close to bliss, really. Bliss had been in short supply for them over the years. She clung to it now like a lifeline.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want another child. She did, desperately. But she wanted mostly to just forget.

  
  
  


4.

Mulder found the pills one day. She knew he had because they weren’t in her usual spot, tucked underneath the bathroom sink beside her tampons.

For a moment she thought he’d gone snooping but he hadn’t. She’d been careless. Maybe she’d wanted to get caught. Maybe she wanted him to yell and scream, get angry at her for giving up their first and only chance at parenthood, and now again for giving up all hope completely. It was smoking cigarettes on her mother’s porch. It was spending the night with a tattooed maniac.

Mulder never brought it up, however. It sat there between them untouched, just one more topic atop the pile of topics they wouldn’t discuss. 

Over time, that pile became a mountain.

  
  
  


5.

She stayed at her mother’s for several weeks.

At first she thought this might blow over; she’d give in, run back to him, follow him the way she always had. But ultimately something was different, something had changed inside her and she couldn’t look away from that anymore.

She kept taking the pills. She had no idea why.

One morning her mother came into the kitchen holding the packet. She wasn’t upset, but her face was contorted with absolute confusion. “Dana, what are these for?” 

Scully sipped her coffee calmly. She wasn’t prepared for this confrontation but she somehow knew what to say without missing a beat. “They’re magic pills, Mom,” she answered. “They help me forget what I can’t have.”

Margaret looked at her then nodded slowly, understanding. Scully loved that about her mother; when they could enjoy a moment of honesty, of clarity, and it required so little from both of them. 

A few days later, she found an apartment. When she left her mother’s, she left the magic pills behind.

  
  


6.

She wasn’t dating anyone. She wasn’t having sex with anyone. Her cycles became erratic, irregular, and her cramps were unpredictable. But it never got bad enough to face the pills again. To face any of it again.

Almost two years passed. Maybe being back on the X-Files, being forced to confront all of it again, made her brave. Or possibly just reckless.

“Do you ever think about William?” she asked him. The words just came out. 

“Yes, of course I do,” Mulder said. “But I feel like I've had to put that behind me.”

He doesn’t say why; that he’d been forced to put it behind him because she wouldn’t speak of it. 

She wondered if what he said was the truth; if he really had put it behind him, or if he was living in denial the way she was. She desperately wanted to talk to him about it.

_All we can do, Scully, is pull the thread, see what it unravels._

  
  
  


7.

Maggie Scully tugged at the thread the day she passed away.

_My son is named William, too._

Even as Scully clung to Mulder, her legs giving way beneath her, mascara smudging and smearing his shirt, he held strong. He wrapped his arms around her and she cried like she hadn’t in years; since the day she left him, in fact.

She couldn’t pinpoint when or how she noticed Mulder had changed, but perhaps it began on this day. She spoke about William, and he listened. It was something.

She continued to pull at the thread, watching it unravel. It unraveled into a Mulder she could see herself with again.

  
  
  


8.

She hadn’t thought about the magic pills in years. 

“Do you want to have more kids?” he asked softly. She could tell he’d wanted to ask this question for some time, that he’d seized an opportunity he probably thought he might never get again. She was literally within his grasp right now.

“I would have liked to have had another one,” she told him honestly. 

“At the risk of sounding insensitive, what’s been stopping you?”

For the first time she thought it was entirely possible he’d never bought the idea she was infertile. Mulder never needed the evidence she’d always required. Perhaps one miracle baby was enough for him to believe.

She wanted to bring up the pills he’d found, the ones they’d never discussed. The ball had been in her court all these years, and she’d never had the courage to serve. When he’d seen those pills, surely it had been game over in his mind.

 _I’m at the end of that journey,_ she’d said. As the words left her mouth they felt like truth. She’d made her peace with that. Had he?

She let him in again that night, and when he leaned in to kiss her his mouth was warm and familiar. Their bodies moved together like they had once before, and when he came inside her he whispered into her ear how much he’d missed her. She’d finally reached the end of the thread and all that was there was him, him, him. She felt absolutely content. 

Maybe this was the way things were meant to be all along.

  
  
  


9.

“You’re pregnant.”

She blinked. She’d heard this before, and hadn’t believed it then, either. “Excuse me?”

“I know, it’s not common at your age, but it happens.”

_I’m all out of miracles._

She hadn’t prayed for this, at least for this specifically, in that church. She believed what she’d told Mulder, that her journey of motherhood was already at an end. What she had prayed for was an end to the darkness. It was the only thing she wanted anymore.

Was God finally listening to her prayers, after all this time?

“But… I’m infertile, doctor.”

The doctor looked at her chart. “That’s not what I’m seeing. Who told you that?”

“Um.” An evil oncologist. A shady in-vitro doctor. The answers sounded so stupid in her mouth she didn’t dare utter them. “I just always thought…”

“Dana, this is your second pregnancy. If you’re infertile, your next call should be to the Vatican.”

She chuckled, her hand flying to her mouth. Tears formed in her eyes. 

It wasn’t funny. It was a miracle.

  
  
  


10.

_You are a father._

She saw in his eyes how much he truly hadn’t let go of that hope over the years. It broke her heart, and just when she’d finally begun to rebuild it. 

_Not now. Not again._ This was going to be something good for them, for once. They deserved it.

She placed his hand against her belly and they stood there, the three of them. A family.

“That’s impossible,” he declared, two words Fox Mulder had never uttered in his life. For the first time he was afraid to believe.

She knew exactly how he was feeling. “I know it is. It’s more than impossible.”

Her hand covered his in hope as she looked into his eyes, watched them change from disbelief to certainty to just plain love. In the end, it truly was that simple.

It _was_ more than impossible, she knew. But she preferred to think of it as a miracle.

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, feedback is always welcomed and appreciated! -a;


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